[quote=Zeitgeist]Flu and other auto experts-
Would shifting it into neutral and braking have stopped the engine? Just thinking out loud.[/quote]

Sorry for the late response. Been really busy lately.

In short, that’s exactly what the driver should have tried to do…Put the car in neutral and/or downshifted to a lower gear and either let the engine blow (unlikely) or let the rev limiter cut the throttle. I did read the article before this was posted here…Definitely a tragedy…I guess in some cases, some people don’t know to put the car in neutral or maybe he did but just paniced. I’m a little surprised that a police officer wouldn’t have thought about this, considering they probably deal with runaway cars all the time.

One thing might have been if the person wasn’t able to shift into neutral, but highly unlikely considering that the lexus es350 gear shifter is not fully electronic (unlike high end BMW’s with the idrive system).

Lots of cars have an electro-mechanical parking brake, so that wouldn’t have helped in this case.

It seems kinda strange this happened. But, yeah I’m no lexus/toyota frankly, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some problems.

The Audi “unintended acceleration problems” were fabricated by 60mins, in which they hired some dude to rig audi into moving by itself. The other folks that actually had a problem was because the gas and the brake pedals in euro cars in the past were placed closer together.

I can tell you several other things that are actually wrong with audis…but unintended acceleration wouldn’t be one of them.

It never ceases to amaze me how much electronics they are putting into cars…It’s getting just ridiculous imho. I’ve decided my next project car (when I have time) will be an old school for track use only car 🙂